The Hunt

Tchaikovsky composed his twelve character pieces for piano, The Seasons, while he was writing his popular ballet, Swan Lake. Each piece in The Seasons depicts a different month of the year in Russia. The original publication of September: The Hunt included an epigraph at the start of the piece-a small poem by Alexander Pushkin. This energetic arrangement for symphonic band by Nathan Jones opens with an octave fanfare between the winds and brass. Tchaikovsky's colorful harmony speaks here, with passing chromaticism adding color to the music. The fanfare theme is transformed in the quiet central section, still shifting to the minor mode with short solo passages for flute, bassoon, trumpet, xylophone and oboe (cued in flutes). The segue back into the opening fanfare is clever, with the notes leading through several keys before concluding in the major with a short reprise of the initial theme.